SMS Pro Aviation Safety Software Blog 4 Airlines & Airports

Everything You Need to Know About Risk Analysis in Aviation SMS Programs

The Multiple Faces of What Risk Is

The concept of risk is something that tends to make safety professionals slightly indignant. The fact is that safety professionals can be more than a little possessive about their definitions, and how they conceive of particular safety elements.

When it comes to risk, a majority of safety managers will note that, “Risk is the composite of predicted severity and likelihood of potential effects of a hazard [occurrence]” (14 CFR § 5.5). Unfortunately, it’s not quite that simple in real world operations. There are actually two ways we talk about risk:

Risk in general: combination of severity and likelihood of safety mishap;

“What is the risk of a risk?” You can see how and why the idea of risk can become confusing. When you see the word “risk” you need to carefully consider:

The context of the conversation – is likelihood/severity being discussed, or is a specific mishap being discussed?

Establishing this context will save much confusion and miscommunication in your aviation SMS program.

Risk Analysis Process

So, the question is: does “risk analysis” refer to:

Risk in general; or

A specific mishap?

In fact, risk analysis addresses both faces of risk, as it:

Is used to analyze all facets of a specific risk; and

In order to understand the risk of that mishap occurring, which is documented with risk assessment.

It’s extremely important to point out again that risk in general is a function of Risk Assessment, and a specific risk is used in risk analysis. Even official documents tend confuse this fact by using “risk analysis” and “assessing risk” interchangeably. There is a reason risk analysis and risk assessment are two different steps in the Risk Management Process. The whole process works like this:

Identify a hazard;

Identify a specific risk associated with the hazard;

Choose risk analysis model

Thoroughly review data relevant to the specific risk;

Understand all elements of the specific risk, such as root causes, mechanisms, etc.; and

Perform risk assessment of risk likelihood and severity of the specific risk occurring.

As you can see, performing risk analysis involves both conceptions of a specific risk and risk in general.

Purpose of Risk Analysis

Performing quality risk analysis in aviation SMS program takes time and practice to master. Real world situations are often messy, unclear, and organizing these situations into logical parts and in logical order is, at best, inexact. Then throw in the fact that oversight agencies have specific expectations about how these situations should be managed, and things become even more confusing.

Ensuring that these “identifiable parts” are the kind that oversight agencies will agree with.

A key point is that risk analysis in aviation SMS is a process with multiple activities and (often) multiple tools that will be used to fulfill the above purposes.

What are Qualitative and Quantitative Data

Quantitative data is data that is measurable with numbers, such as:

Quantity;

Amount; or

Rate.

Qualitative data is data that is measured by judgment, such as:

Type (i.e., root cause, human factors);

Value (i.e., good, bad, etc.); or

Timeline, such as order of important events.

Qualitative data may be aided by quantitative data, such as by using quantitative data to support a qualitative value judgment. Also, quantitative data may be aided by an expert qualitative judgment in order to assess the value of a piece of quantitative data.

Advantages of Quantitative Data for Risk Analysis

Advantages of using quantitative data are:

Objective;

Specific;

Rational analysis;

Substantiation of findings;

Easy to document;

Hard support of decisions; and

Used for modeling.

Because of these advantageous, quantitative data is looked upon kindlier and with more acceptance than qualitative data. For this reason, it should be the primary tool with risk analysis.

Advantages of Qualitative Data for Risk Analysis

Advantages of qualitative data for risk analysis are:

Insight into general trends;

Connect and compare unrelated pieces of quantitative data;

Assess value of quantitative data; and

Narrow potential safety decisions.

For example, suppose you are performing risk analysis on a particular accident. Quantitatively, you might data mine for similar historical occurrences. Qualitatively, you might analyze the quality of safety culture in contributing/mitigating the accident, with an outcome like, “Lack of strong safety culture was a root cause for issue as it delayed hazard identification response and allowed the incident to more quickly result in hazard occurrence.”